03 September 2012

Good Art #2. Teaching A Plant The Alphabet.

I saw John Baldessari's Teaching A Plant the Alphabet at the Centre Pompidou in 2006, and I was transfixed by it from the get go. I watched for a second time before I laughed out loud in the rather serious gallery surrounds. A few people looked on disapprovingly, and I moved on before tears started flowing. I came back to the work three times before leaving the gallery that day, each time watching it to the end and laughing. Even now just thinking about this work makes me smile. I love its absurdity and simplicity, its tactility and its message of futility. I later learned this work was a response to Joseph Beuys’s How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, a contender for a future Good Art post.